Indirect variable assignment in bash

Question

Seems that the recommended way of doing indirect variable setting in bash is to use eval:

var=x; val=foo eval $var=$val echo $x  # --> foo 

The problem is the usual one with eval:

var=x; val=1$'\n'pwd eval $var=$val  # bad output here 

(and since it is recommended in many places, I wonder just how many scripts are vulnerable because of this...)

In any case, the obvious solution of using (escaped) quotes doesn't really work:

var=x; val=1\"$'\n'pwd\" eval $var=\"$val\"  # fail with the above 

The thing is that bash has indirect variable reference baked in (with ${!foo}), but I don't see any such way to do indirect assignment -- is there any sane way to do this?

For the record, I did find a solution, but this is not something that I'd consider "sane"...:

eval "$var='"${val//\'/\'\"\'\"\'}"'" 

Answer 1

A slightly better way, avoiding the possible security implications of using eval, is

declare "$var=$val" 

Note that declare is a synonym for typeset in bash. The typeset command is more widely supported (ksh and zsh also use it):

typeset "$var=$val" 

---

In modern versions of bash, one should use a nameref.

declare -n var=x x=$val 

It's safer than eval, but still not perfect.